Page 36 of The Mafia Bloodline
Viking threw up his hands. “I was already dressed!”
All eyes turned to me next.
Runa was watching me, waiting, her honey eyes steady. Defiant. Beautiful.
“Say no,” Draugr rumbled under his breath beside me.
“I should,” I muttered.
Her gaze didn’t waver. “But you won’t.”
Damn her, she was right.
I exhaled hard, running a hand through my hair. “One hour,” I said finally, holding her eyes. “No wandering. No leaving my sight. If a man so much as looks at you wrong…”
“I know,” she interrupted, her lips twitching. “You’ll tear his throat out.”
“Glad we understand each other.”
She smirked, reaching up on tiptoe to whisper in my ear. “Maybe you should focus on not scaring the bartender first.”
“You’re completely fucked, brother.” Viking’s laugh still echoed in the corridor as he clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll kill you later,” I muttered, but the grin that wanted to crawl across my face stayed buried. There was work to do.
The house shifted into motion the second we agreed. This wasn’t a party for us; it was a movement that had to look like a party. A parade with teeth. I walked through it like a conductor, only the orchestra were men with guns and children with bedtime stories.
“Listen up,” I said, my voice quiet but precise. “Four cars. Roman takes the front Escalade with Layla, Lucien takes the third with Sorcha, Viking and Draugr take the centre. I’m in the rear with Runa. Colt drives for me. Jericho and Troy are mounted in the second car as sweeps. Gideon, you coordinate perimeter and the rooftop watchers. Ashen and Rael, you stay with the back door and the upstairs exits.”
No one argued. They didn’t have to. It was the language we spoke, placement, contingency, and to protect the family.
I ticked off names in my head the way a chef checks pans, reliable and already hot.
Colt was at the garage, he is lean, focused, the kind of driver who could make a blacked-out SUV sing through traffic and leave nothing but silence behind. He had a bag of weapons on thepassenger seat that looked too cheerful for the occasion. There are suppressed pistols, blade kits, and signal flares. Jericho signed off with a thumbs-up before climbing into the sweep vehicle; Troy checked the magazines with a quick, professional motion that said he’d done it in worse light and under worse skies.
Inside, the women were finishing last minute touches. Layla was smoothing a stray curl, Runa double-knotting her shoes as if she expected them to come undone just from breathing. The kids, Aleksander and Suraya, were herded into the sitting room and handed over with more gentleness than anyone outside this family would believe us capable of. Kaisha and Lydia split childcare duty for the night.
“Who’s on the kids?” Layla asked, voice soft, and I saw Roman’s jaw loosen for just a fraction.
“Kaisha with Aleksander,” I said. “Lydia with Suraya. They’ll be inside. Two men in the corridor and one outside the door. No one touches the nursery. Understood?”
Layla nodded. The gratitude in her eyes felt like a small strike of heat under the stern ductwork of planning.
We briefed the women once more in the hall, the three of them standing together like a small, dangerous constellation. I’d already gone over the rules, there will be no wandering, two-person rule for bathrooms and doorways, the signal word (Sorcha would call it), and the one move that shut the night down, a single phrase Gideon would use over both our private and the public channels if anyone so much as smelled like trouble.
“Signal is ‘Anchor,’” I said out loud. “If you hear ‘Anchor,’ you pull them out. Immediately. No argument. No heroics.”
Runa looped her fingers through mine, steady. “Anchor,” she echoed, and there was a grin in it that meant we both knew how safe could feel dangerously intoxicating.
The convoy slid out as one, three blacked-out SUVs, their lights dimmed, drivers like ghosts. We moved through the city with carved efficiency; Colt’s route took us through back alleys and service roads to avoid surveillance, Lucien’s car trimming the tail we’d left, Roman’s front car set to draw attention away from us. Two sweep bikes rode ahead, shade moving like a low tide. The men in the vehicles checked their gear one last time with a silent choreography, magazines, silencers, flares, the knife at the thigh where it could be found without thinking.
At the Havoc loading bay, the club staff had been briefed, there were two reserved booths on the mezzanine, a staff liaison who knew to keep the area around us clear, and a discreet security detail that blended with the crowd but shared our markings with a small token Gideon had issued. The club itself had been swept twice by our men; cameras looped, exits monitored. Still, every shadow at the entrance got a cautious look as we moved in.
We walked in as if we owned every heartbeat of the room, the brothers flanking the women like pillars of dark marble. Viking elbowed me with a smirk as we took our place at the booth, but his eyes flicked to the crowd, always measuring. Roman’s hand was a quiet, possessive weight on Layla’s thigh. Lucien stayed close to Sorcha; Draugr was already a wall between us and the door. My gaze found Runa across the table, catching hers and giving her the smallest of signs, a light press of thumb to forefinger that meant I’ve got you.
Above the beat and the lights and the smoke, I felt the men moving in orbit around us, ready. The plan had a thousand small redundancies. There are men in the roof, two exits watched,three cars loaded and ready to roll, med kits on standby, the twins at the back with knives polished and flashlights ready, and two sets of changeling eyes.
Still, under the armour of logistics, something older tightened in my chest, a wordless promise: no one would touch what was mine tonight. If the night wanted trouble, it would get it. If the city wanted to test us, we’d answer. But first, we’d let them think this was only a night out. Let the music hang between us like a temporary truce. Let the brothers laugh, let the women breathe.
